


Yaz, the Doctor, and the Secrets of the Universe

by hetzi_clutch



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Baking, F/F, Fluff, Romance, a little bit of a cross with the great british baking show, and the doctor loves to watch her, anyway, basically yaz loves to bake, but like barely, or could be considered me ranting about why creativity will save the universe, thasmin, this is literally tooth rotting fluff be warned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 04:34:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17481272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hetzi_clutch/pseuds/hetzi_clutch
Summary: Yaz bakes cakes, and tries to figure out the secrets of the universe.Or, Yaz bakes, and the Doctor falls a little bit in love.





	Yaz, the Doctor, and the Secrets of the Universe

**Author's Note:**

> This is utter fluff written at one AM purely because I like to bake but it's one AM so I can't bake so here I am. If you're wondering what show I'm talking about, it's definitely the great british baking show.

“What. Are. You. Doing.”

Yaz froze, then peeked out over the top of the cake she had just begun to decorate. A nearly full icing bag hung guiltily in her flour-smattered hands.

“I-is this okay?”

The Doctor’s expression was unreadable. She was staring at the cake, mouth hanging open, and then her eyes darted to Yaz, who quickly straightened up and laid the icing bag on the table. “I’m sorry, I thought it wouldn’t be a problem—”

Actually, she hadn’t given it much thought either way, when she’d started rummaging through the TARDIS’s small (but surprisingly well-stocked) kitchen. Ryan had given her the idea, after she’d tried to drag him into doing something other than playing video games (“Geez, Yaz, if you’re so bored of Call of Duty, why don’t you go and— I dunno, bake something? You still like baking, don’t you?”), and she briefly considered tossing some of the blame on him before the Doctor started berating her. 

_Well you should have asked,_ a voice at the back of her mind piped up, and internally Yaz cringed. Of course the Doctor would have some sort of house rules, and it wasn’t as if the kitchen was really made for anything other than simple meals. She’d had to dig to even find the measuring spoons, which for some reason had been stored in the compartment under the oven.

The Doctor still hadn’t spoken. Her eyes were glued to the cake. Another beat passed, and Yaz decided _oh, to hell with it,_ she would just get the jump on things.

“I’m really sorry if you didn’t want me to bang up the kitchen but I’m actually really careful and I always clean up after and anyway, it was Ryan’s idea so—”

“Did you make this?”

“Huh?” Yaz stopped short.

The Doctor pointed at the cake. It was an enormous thing, and already covered with a thick layer of white icing. On the decorative side, however, it was quite bare. “Did you…make that whole thing?”

Yaz still wasn’t sure what reaction the Doctor was coming from. Rather sheepishly, she nodded.

Unexpectedly, the Doctor burst into the biggest, toothiest grin she had ever seen. “Yasmin Khan, you may possibly be the best person I’ve ever invited onto my ship.”

“Wh—” Before Yaz could fully respond, the Doctor bounded forward and knelt down until her nose was about level with the table the cake rested on. Pure excitement danced in her eyes. “Ooh, what kind is it? Vanilla? I do love a good vanilla cake. It looks absolutely fantastic, can I try some when you’re done? How long til you’re done, by the way?”

“I—” it would be an understatement to say this took Yaz off guard. Somehow, the Doctor’s stunned expression had led her to believe she had crossed a line, though in retrospect that seemed a completely off-base conclusion. But Yaz was used to dirtying up her own kitchen, not others’, and her parents had always impressed upon her the unspoken rules of being a guest. So even though they had already been traveling a good few weeks with the Doctor, and she had begun to feel at home on the TARDIS, that didn’t mean she wasn’t wary of as-yet-undiscovered rules.

But the Doctor was clearly over the moon at the sight of the monstrous cake in front of her, and Yaz couldn’t help but flush with pride—and not a little bit of relief that she hadn’t crossed some unspoken line.

“I’ll be done soon, actually.” She lifted up the icing bag again, handling it gently so as to prevent any icing from escaping. “It’s, um, a white cake actually. Well, kind of. It’s mostly white because I used egg whites, but I added in a regular egg too because if you don’t it’s too dry…”

“Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.” The Doctor straightened up, still grinning broadly, and then caught sight of the icing bag in Yaz’s hands. “Ooh, is that the decoration? What are you going to do to it? Can I try—no wait, I should just watch, I’ll probably muck it up.”

She shot out a hand and pulled up a chair, its legs screeching as it dragged across the floor. Yaz winced but the Doctor seemed oblivious, as she twisted it around so the back was facing the table, and dropped into it, crossing her arms over the headrest so as to provide her chin a place to rest.

Yaz stared at her, and had the sudden urge to laugh—a happy, giddy laugh, buoyed by the Doctor’s utterly boundless enthusiasm for a cake she hadn’t known existed a minute ago. The Doctor was staring gazing dreamily at the cake, and then her gaze drifted to Yaz, and a small frown line appeared.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Yaz swallowed a chuckled and bent back down over the cake, forcing herself to focus on the job in front of her. If she laughed now, her hand could shake, and she might ruin the job. And Yaz, a bit of a perfectionist, couldn’t stand the thought of an _almost_ impeccable cake.

But the Doctor seemed to understand, for she made no attempt to bother her, only watched, and Yaz quickly slipped into the same state of concentration she always found when working on a project—whether it be decorating a cake, studying for exams, or learning the many rules of police work. Occasionally she heard the Doctor mutter a soft “brilliant”, or “fantastic, never would’ve thought to do that”, and she couldn’t help but glow with pride at the praise— but internally. Wouldn’t do to look like a soppy nerd in front of the Doctor, not when she was already considered as such back as home. As a rule-abider. A square. Sort of lame.

After all, it wasn’t the cool kids who liked to bake as a hobby.

She finished up fairly quickly (and couldn’t help but be egged on just a tiny bit by the Doctor’s eager expression and rather twitchy fingers), and tossed the now-empty icing bag on the counter behind her, a smile of satisfaction making its way up her face. “That’s pretty much it, I reckon.”

“You’re done?” the Doctor sprang straight up in her seat, eyes glittering with barely concealed anticipation. “Fantastic! Does this mean we get to eat it now?”

“Uh yeah, let me just yell for Ryan and Graham.” She went to run her fingers, caked with icing, across her shirt, then remembered that it was new and stopped short, grimacing. “Next time I’ll have to wear an apron.”

“Oh, I can get you an apron.” The Doctor leapt to her feet and was already leaning out the doorway before Yaz had time to properly wipe her hands. Her next words came out muffled. “I’ll buy you a hundred different ones if you keep baking for us—Ryan! Graham! There’s cake!”

In all the time that Yaz had been on the TARDIS, she had never thought the ship small enough to shout from end to end. In fact, she knew it wasn’t, for her own room was at least three hallways from the kitchen, which was in turn a hallway and two flights of stairs from the console room. And it changed, often. But the Doctor must have had some special technique, for when she shouted Yaz heard it echo, not only in the kitchen, but down the hallways as well. 

She shouted it again just to make sure, and then withdrew her head from the doorway and spun around to face Yaz. Her face was still split in an enormous grin as she clapped her hands together.

“Well, go on!” she ushered Yaz toward the counter, where a knife Yaz couldn’t recall seeing before now lay. “Cut it!”

“Shouldn’t we wait til—” but the Doctor had already grabbed the knife from the counter and, with a movement Yaz was sure she _must_ have practiced, twirled the knife and then flipped the handle towards Yaz.

“Your cake.” She grinned, her hazel eyes sparkling. “You get to cut it. That’s how it works on earth, right? Unless you’re at a wedding I think, but it’s been a while since I went to one of those.”

“Well—” Yaz almost corrected her, and then stopped short. There was something about her smile that she didn’t want to ruin. “Yeah, the wedding thing is a pretty big exception. And I suppose if you get store-bought.”

She took the knife, just as Ryan ducked through the doorway, followed closely behind by Graham.

“Blimey Yaz, that’s amazing.” Ryan shook his head as he stared at the cake. It was rather large, Yaz acknowledged, a three-layer vanilla monstrosity, topped with plenty of icing. “You actually made one? You know I wasn’t being serious, right?”

Yaz shrugged. “Yeah, but I was bored. And watching Call of Duty isn’t very fun, no offense Ryan.”

Ryan made a face, but didn’t comment. Graham was bent over, examining the tiny details of the icing she’d piped on only moments before. “I’m with Ryan, Yaz—this is incredible. And you decided to become a beat cop?”

“Oi!” Yaz said. “I have other talents too, thanks. But also, um, thanks. Seriously. And it’s more of a hobby, really.”

“And a brilliant one at that!” the Doctor cut in, and gave Yaz a meaningful nudge. She had been rocking back and forth on her heels the entire conversation, impatience furrowing her brow. “But while I do appreciate all the chatter going around, and I will be adding one hundred points to Yaz’s total—sorry Graham, Ryan—I think we’re all missing the point here.”

Graham straightened up, looked at her in confusion. As did Ryan. “Which is?”

“To eat it!”

Yaz laughed. “Okay, okay! Ryan, grab some plates, will ya?”

She moved forward to slice into her creation, and began to dole out the pieces as Ryan supplied her with plates. The Doctor snatched up the first piece as soon as it slid onto the plate, but to Yaz’s surprise, actually placed it to the side before picking up the next one and passing it over to Graham. When she raised her eyebrows at her, the Doctor’s cheeks colored slightly pink. “Had to make sure you get the first one. It’s usually the best, don’t you think?”

Yaz didn’t quite know what to say to this, so she just mumbled a thank you and quickly turned her attention to her work, praying that the Doctor wouldn’t see the blush creeping up her cheeks.

They ate in appreciative silence, except for the Doctor, who exclaimed over every part of the cake.

“Ooh, the sponge is so moist!” she exclaimed, ignoring Ryan’s wince at the word. “And the icing—how’d you do the icing, Yaz? It’s different from the normal type, isn’t it?”

“Well, yeah,” Yaz said, and then hesitated, because nobody had actually asked about her baking techniques before. They’d enjoyed the things she made, sure, but nobody ever asked, except to be polite. But when she didn’t immediately respond the Doctor leaned forward and propped her elbows up on the table, the picture of attentive listening. Yaz smiled, and her heart fluttered, just for a second.

“So it’s actually—”

The next time she baked, the Doctor was there almost immediately. And the next time. And the time after that. On her fourth baking venture, the Doctor arrived just as she was getting the ingredients out, bursting into the kitchen with a loosely folded garment in her hands which she presented to Yaz almost shyly.

“Sorry it took me so long, I have a couple of aprons on board but I wanted to get you something new—” she shook it out as she talked, letting it drape from her hands so that Yaz could see the writing on it. “—caught it down in Sheffield last time I dropped you lot off, and I thought you might think it’s funny.” 

She paused, and then added, “What d’you think?” 

Yaz stared. It was a fairly standard apron, patterned in white with red strings and red lettering, with little pictures of cakes and baking supplies decorating the text. It was nice, even had pockets. Better actually, than her mum’s old apron, which she had used at home.

Only the text displayed across the front read in big block letters: KISS THE COOK, with the word ‘cook’ crossed out and replaced with ‘baker’.

Yaz knew the Doctor had at least some level of psychic abilities, but she could only hope that they were incredibly weak, or that she never used them on her friends. Because if she did, she would almost certainly be able to catch Yaz’s internal screaming.

She had to wonder if the Doctor had bought that apron for anything other than innocent reasons—but she couldn’t unpack that when the Doctor was standing right there, waiting for her approval.

“It’s—wow.” But Yaz hadn’t learned to maintain proper composure in front of the angry public for nothing. “Wow, Doctor, it’s great. I love it.”

“Really?” the Doctor seemed uncertain, searching Yaz’s eyes for some sign otherwise, but she apparently didn’t see anything, for after a moment a grin split her face. “Brilliant! Great apron for a great baker. So, what’re you making today?”

She handed the apron over and slid into what had become her regular seat, from which she spectated Yaz’s baking endeavors. As Yaz put the apron on and began to explain the pastries she was attempting—repeat _attempting_ —to make, the Doctor listened, nodding, with the same enthusiasm she always did, though sometimes her eyes fell to the slogan written across Yaz’s chest. As if she couldn’t decide if it really had been the proper thing to get or not.

And on any other occasion, Yaz thought as she began to fold the butter into the flour, she would have absolutely loved it. The only problem with this one was that now Ryan would never let her hear the end of it.

———

Baking became sort of her thing on the TARDIS, just as it had been back at home, before she’d gotten busy with exams and then police work. She baked sometimes just when she was bored, when she couldn’t find a good book in the library or a movie in the entertainment room, but more often, she found herself baking after their adventures.

Because the longer they traveled together, the more stressful their adventures became, and the more Yaz needed an outlet for all that stress. Ryan had Call of Duty, and Graham, funnily enough, had picked up knitting—a twenty-third century version which involved three needles, but still. Yaz had working out, a habit she’d gotten into when she’d joined the police, but that didn’t entirely help. There was nothing to distract her thoughts when she went for a run, or moved through a set of calisthenics, and sometimes when she finished and hit the showers she’d find herself even more dispirited than before.

But baking was different. There wasn’t much ruminating one could do when attempting a new recipe, trying to match complicated steps as precisely as possible so as to avoid any potential mishaps or flaws in the final product. It became a new tradition for her, after their more harrowing adventures. Ryan would go off to the entertainment room, Graham would dig out his three needles and a good show, and Yaz would head to the kitchen. And it worked, where exercise didn’t; as her recipes became more and more complex, Yaz would often become so absorbed that she would forget everything, forget even to even answer the Doctor’s questions, which would then hang in the air until she repeated herself, jerking Yaz out of some recipe-related musing. 

By now, the Doctor was nearly always with her. Not every single time, when she baked for boredom or just to try something new. But after their adventures, when Yaz would head to the kitchen, the Doctor would always appear a few minutes after. Usually still in the same clothes she had set out in, hair or sleeves sometimes singed, sonic mindlessly tucked into her pocket. Sometimes still sporting cuts and scrapes from their adventures, of which Yaz would then force the Doctor out of the kitchen and into the medbay, warning her not to come back until she was ‘sterile enough to be around food’.

But those times were far in between, because truthfully Yaz loved the Doctor’s presence in the kitchen. She had never liked having people in the kitchen with her before, a distaste which harkened back to her teenage years, when Sonia had been a brat who followed her around and wreaked havoc on Yaz’s baking attempts—usually by getting into the icing or the batter when she wasn’t looking. 

But the Doctor didn’t wreak havoc; she sat in her regular chair, and watched Yaz, and usually plied her with questions about what she was doing, how she was doing it, and why. She did sometimes swipe a taste of the icing or the batter when Yaz wasn’t looking, but she figured that was fair payment for the pleasure of her company. 

Sometimes the Doctor didn’t always ask questions. Sometimes she just sat, and watched without really seeing, and once when Yaz couldn’t find her spoon she turned around to find the Doctor licking it contemplatively, a far away look in her eye. If Sonia had done that (she had, on multiple occasions), Yaz would’ve killed her. But they had just gotten back from a terrible day, wherein they’d fallen into the arms of a genocidal dictator just before he’d launched his master plan to wipe out a good portion of the people he claimed were ‘undesirables’, and though the Doctor tried to get through to him, she hadn’t managed it. So as it was, she just turned back to the counter, where a new spoon had mysteriously appeared.

After a while, they began to talk. Not just about recipes and baking techniques, but other things. The Doctor’s questions about how she’d done something eventually evolved into where she’d learned that method, which evolved into other things as well; why she’d learned to bake, what other things did she like to do, and did she think baking had any correlation to being a police officer?

The last one Yaz had to think about before answering, but the others led her easily into long discussions on her life, all of which the Doctor listened to with the focus of a top-mark student—not that she could imagine why. So to compensate she began to ask questions in return. Little ones at first, but then deeper, carefully feeling out the things that the Doctor was easily willing to talk about, and the subjects to which she was more reluctant. It reminded Yaz of digging through a tub of ice cream just to get the chunks of cookie dough, only with a lot more care. 

“Y’know, you’re fantastic at this,” the Doctor said one day, as Yaz slid what she was hoping would end up as a souffle into the oven.

“What, baking?”

“Nah.” The Doctor waved her hand. “I mean, that too obviously, but not only. You’re good at talking, Yasmin Khan. I like talking to you.”

“Oh.” Yaz carefully closed the oven door, and stood up. “Thank you. That’s probably a good thing, I have to talk a lot to people in my job, you know.”

The Doctor made a face at the weak joke and grabbed the now-empty bowl of batter closer. With the help of Yaz’s now unused spoon, she began to scrape the sides. “Well that bit wasn’t particularly good, but since I’m speaking as a whole I’ll allow it.”

She was quiet for a moment, and then continued. “You know, I don’t talk very much.”

Yaz look at her, confused. “Doctor, you talk all the time. Literally.”

“No—” the Doctor took one last lick from the spoon, stuck it inside the practically cleaned bowl, and shoved it back to the opposite side of the table. Only then did she look up at Yaz, her eyes glinting with something unreadable. “Let me say it differently. I don’t talk to very many people. But you, Yaz, you’re great at talking. And I really like that about you.”

There was a moment right then, Yaz realized only later, that she could have said something, and the conversation would have fallen a different way. A way it felt like the Doctor was steering towards, even if she didn’t seem to recognize it herself. Yaz only had to say something. Anything, except for—

“Oh, well, thank you,” she answered, cheeks suddenly burning, and then she remembered that her souffle was in the oven, and even though she didn’t have to take it out yet, keeping an eye upon it was the perfect way to avoid looking the Doctor in the eye, because she had no idea to respond to what she just said, except for one way which she didn’t have the bravery for. So she squatted down and kept her gaze fixed on the oven, and watched it rise, to her enormous relief. The Doctor didn’t say anything more, not until the souffle came out of the oven, but Yaz felt the silence hanging over them both, suddenly heavy with unsaid words, the meaning of which she wasn’t sure she understand.

The souffle fell. 

They ate it anyway, all four of them together, in what had also become something of a new tradition for them. Baking at Yaz’s, the Doctor called it jokingly, and as soon as Yaz had finished whatever she was making the Doctor would leap to her feet and stick her head out the door and call to the boys in that special way she always did, which none of them knew how to replicate. She never used it for anything else, either, and when Yaz once asked her about it she only answered, with a completely straight face, that she saved it for important things. Yaz couldn’t tell if she was joking or not.

As months passed, Yaz’s baking adventures grew increasingly more ambitious. It was partly because she was baking more than she had in the past few years, and partly because, with all the hair-raising trips they ended up on, simple cakes and biscuits just didn’t cut it anymore. She needed more complicated projects, things that she really had to focus on, because in Yaz’s mind the best part about a bake wasn’t the end product—though the Doctor entirely disagreed—but about the process, combining simple ingredients in every sort of way, to make everything from cakes to pastries to dinner rolls. She’d once mentioned to the Doctor, after she’d pressed her on the _why_ of how she’d started baking, that she simply thought it was amazing that the same ingredients could make hundreds of different things. All you needed was the know-how, and a little skill.

(The Doctor’s eyes shone at Yaz’s answer, and she responded softly that the universe was the same way, anywhere—all made up of the same blocks, but building entirely different things based on no more than a slight variation in the recipe, and wasn’t that fantastic?

Yaz agreed.)

Yaz didn’t have many failures in the kitchen—at least, not inedible ones. She was too fastidious for that, and after a while, too experienced. Usually whatever came out as the end product turned out to be at least semi-tasty, even if it wasn’t perfect.

But her most spectacular failure came several months after she had started baking in the TARDIS. It also came right on the heels of her most ambitious creation. 

They had had a failure bad day, possibly one of their worst. It hadn’t even started well, once they stepped out of the TARDIS—and straight into the Nazi invasion of Poland. What had followed was probably one of the worst things Yaz had ever witnessed, despite all of the horrors she’d seen in their romp through time and space. Probably because all the people in the little village they’d sheltered in, until they’d been forced out (and nearly killed themselves), were all so utterly human. Watching aliens do terrible things was a little different; it seemed distant, almost unrelated. Not exactly Yaz’s burden to bear. But back on earth in 1939, watching utterly normal people turn over their neighbors, or Nazis joking as they rounded up prisoners, put a heavy weight in Yaz’s chest, and a sick feeling in her stomach that she couldn’t quite shake.

So she set out to make a choux nun. It was something she’d seen on a baking show once, and had shaken her head at the time at the nefarious difficulty of it. It involved three free-standing tiers of eclairs, which in themselves were a lengthy and pernicious bake, all stacked on top of each other in what was ostensibly meant to be the shape of a nun. Yaz always thought it more resembled the Eiffel tower, but she wasn’t one to argue.

The Doctor trooped in only a few minutes after she’d started pulling out ingredients. She didn’t give her normal cheerful greeting, but just slid into her regular seat and propped her arms up on the table, cradling her head. She asked only one question about what Yaz was baking, and then gave an appreciative nod before lapsing back into silence. It was a far cry from her normal level of chatter.

But when Yaz glanced at her, several times throughout the process, the Doctor was still watching her with a thoughtful expression upon her face. 

And despite her plan, the choux nun wasn’t working. At least, not in terms of distraction. Usually after such events, Yaz was able to switch her brain back to ‘normal’ to try and focus on something small and creative, such as a pastry to bake, but today was not her day. Whenever her thoughts drifted, even for a moment, she saw the terrified faces of the people in that village, and the careless attitudes of the Nazis, talking and laughing as if they were going about a regular job at the office, rather than the business of murder. It was awful, and distracting, and it led her hands to culinary disaster.

First her patisserie came out runny, then she accidentally overcooked her choux. The biscuits she was making to stiffen up the structure began to burn, and she only caught them at the last minute when the Doctor sniffed the air and announced that she was almost 97% sure that something was about to go up in flames.

In short, nothing worked out. The icing, the filling, even the eclairs themselves—if they weren’t inedible, which Yaz suspected, they would at least be unpleasant to eat. And she still hadn’t even built the damn thing.

“This is not working,” she declared, and set the pan of half-filled eclairs on the stovetop. The filling was running all over the pan, and she could have tried her hand at a second batch, but she didn’t have the energy. It was all too much. After the day they’d had, the things they’d seen, and the choux nun, which was nearing catastrophe, all Yaz wanted to do was throw in her oven mitts and go to sleep. But she knew if she did she would have nightmares. 

“Hey, hey! Wait a minute.” The Doctor leapt to her feet and strode over to Yaz, who stood in front of the oven staring miserably at her eclairs. “You can’t know it’s not working til it’s done, right?”

“I can guess,” Yaz answered, and gestured bitterly towards her creations. “Look at this, Doctor, I don’t think I can even put it together. And I’m not sure I want to.”

“Oh, c’mon.” The Doctor nudged her in the shoulder then, when that got no response, decided to take matters into her own hands. She reached out and took two eclairs, trying to stack them together. “No giving up in my kitchen.”

Despite herself, Yaz smiled at this. “I thought it was my kitchen.”

“Pssh, I’m just lettin’ you borrow it. Now, don’t you have, er, something to stick them together?” She was making a mess of her hands already, and as she lifted them higher from the pan, cream began running down her sleeves.

“Ooh,” she grimaced. “I’m going to have to do laundry, aren’t I? I usually just switch out coats, but I only have one other.”

At this, Yaz finally broke into a laugh. “Okay, wait, I do have something.”

She took out a bowl of sticky syrup she’d made up, and, with the Doctor’s help, carefully began to construct the base of the choux nun. They worked together, propping up the eclairs and then righting them when they fell, eventually moving on to the second layer, and then the third. It took a while, but as they worked the Doctor kept up a stream of chatter, this time without questions; instead she told stories about herself in the past, things that Yaz couldn’t recall her ever mentioning before that moment. She talked about worlds that apparently no longer existed, and a little about her own home world, and some of the trouble she’d gotten into as a child. By the time they reached the end Yaz was entranced, so much so that she didn’t even think twice when the Doctor took her hands away from the choux nun, in order to gesture as she told some funny story.

Immediately, the choux nun collapsed. It was almost in slow motion, and both the Doctor and Yaz noticed it at the same time. They leapt forward with twin yelps of alarm to catch it, but to no avail; the entire structure crumpled, leaving them covered in sticky syrup and with their arms full of burnt eclairs and biscuit.

Yaz stared at the mess in her hands, and then looked up at the Doctor, who appeared equally shocked—and even more stricken. 

“Yaz,” she shook her head slowly. “I am _so_ sorry—”

“Oh, don’t be daft,” Yaz said, and deposited her armful of eclairs back onto the pan. “It wasn’t going to stand up from the start, I think we both knew that. It’s completely fine, Doctor.”

And it was completely fine, even though there was a lump building in her throat, and she couldn’t figure out why. It wasn’t exactly related to the choux nun because—being honest with herself—Yaz hadn’t really gone into the bake with a burning drive to success. She’d simply wanted to take her mind off things, to try and focus on something other than— _oh._

“It is fine,” she repeated, and then reached up to wipe the tears out of her eyes. “It _is._ ”

The Doctor looked at her helplessly. “Then…why are you crying?”

Stupid, traitorous tears.

Yaz huffed and leaned against counter. “It’s not _that,_ ” she sniffed. “I’m sorry, Doctor, it’s not my baking, it’s just that I’m crying over something stupid when I should be crying over—”

She didn’t finish, but she caught the Doctor’s gaze through blurry vision and knew she understood. “Oh, Yaz. It’s okay to cry over baking. Especially if it’s really good. I had tears in my eyes when I tried your raspberry tart, you know.”

Yaz snorted in laughter, and then wiped at her nose with her sleeve. “Maybe. I’m just thinking that—it doesn’t help anybody, you know? Baking stuff. I’m just distracting myself.”

“No!” The Doctor drew herself up to her full height, stiffening at the indignity of her statement. “Yasmin Khan, that is the most important thing of all! You respond to destruction by creating something, by taking these two hands,”—she reached out and grabbed Yaz’s hands, ignoring the syrup coating them— “and making something good! It’s the most beautiful thing in the world!”

She paused, sucked in a breath, and then seemed to realize that she had accidentally pulled Yaz close enough so that they were practically touching. 

“Sorry,” she muttered, and went to pull away—and then seemed to think better of it. “Actually, you know what? I’m not!”

Abruptly she pulled her hands out of their rather sticky embrace, and took Yaz by the shoulders, spinning her to face the stove. “Do see what this is here?”

Yaz followed her gaze dubiously. “It looks like I tried to blow up the kitchen.”

The Doctor laughed, and flung an arm around her shoulder. “No, it looks like you tried! That’s what I’m trying to say, Yaz—as long as you come back from terrible things, and you keep trying to create something good, you’ll be doing the best thing anybody’s ever done in the universe!”

Yaz studied the mess on the stovetop for a moment. She tilted her head. She could see what the Doctor was saying, sure, but—

“Doctor, I think you might be giving me a bit too much credit. Not that I mind, but—I wasn’t thinking about anything like that.”

She felt the Doctor let out a slight exhale, and then she pulled away so as to look Yaz in the face. Her eyes searched Yaz’s, and for a strange second, Yaz had the feeling that the Doctor was looking at something deep inside of her, far deeper than even she knew herself.

“Yasmin Khan.” when she spoke, her voice was soft, and completely serious. “I know you didn’t mean all of that on purpose. And I’m not standing here trying to comfort you because we couldn’t build a tower of eclairs. I’m just trying to tell you what _I_ see—and that’s somebody who works harder than anybody I know to make sure the world is a better place, even if it’s through the tiniest of things. Like a biscuit. Or a piece of cake. And _that’s_ why it’s brilliant. That’s why _you’re_ brilliant.”

“Oh.” Yaz didn’t know how to respond to that. She couldn’t remember a time that anybody had called her brilliant with such _reverence_ in their tone, as if they truly, properly meant it. “Do you really think I’m brilliant?”

“Wouldn’t say it if I didn’t.” The Doctor looked her in the eye, and cocked her head. “Brilliant, with just a dash of icing on your cheek. Do you mind if I—?”

She didn’t actually wait to see if Yaz minded. She reached over and took it off herself with her thumb, and Yaz blushed bright red, which made the Doctor pause. “Yaz, are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she said quickly, and then realized it was too quickly, and blushed even deeper. The Doctor’s brow crinkled slightly, worried. “Yeah, I just—well, you were just telling me I was brilliant, and now you’re brushing icing off my face and it’s—it’s a little bit much.”

If this was meant to explain, it had the opposite effect. The Doctor’s brow wrinkled further, her expression the complete antithesis of understanding. “What do you mean, a little bit much? Am _I_ a little bit much?”

“No! I mean—well, not on purpose. Or rather—no, but it’s not—you know what? Never mind. Forget I said anything.” But Yaz could already tell there was no going back from that jumbled mess, just as there was no going back from the eclair catastrophe on the counter. The Doctor was looking at her, something mischievous sparkling in her eye, and Yaz had the sudden feeling that whatever it was she had been trying to brush off, the Doctor had already figured out.

“Yasmin Khan, do I make you flustered?” the shadow of a smile was creeping up her face, and Yaz was torn between wanting to sink into the floor or take the more traditional method of escaping the Doctor’s attention, which usually involved plying her with baked goods.

“Uh…no?”

“Huh.” The Doctor tilted her head thoughtfully. “Would I make you flustered then, if I…?”

And before Yaz could react, the Doctor leaned forward and kissed her on the lips, no more than a quick peck, but it did the trick; by the time she came away, Yaz was completely red-faced, all the way down to her neck, and, if she hadn’t been before, well and truly flustered.

“Doctor!” she said, for lack of any other reaction (she certainly hadn’t prepared for _this_ ), and it immediately struck her that she sounded like an offended Victorian gentlewoman, which of course, made her even more embarrassed. “You can’t—I didn’t—”

“Oh, sorry.” The Doctor’s expression shifted from impish triumph to chagrin. “I thought—I mean I thought you—I’m sorry Yaz, I must have misread—”

“You didn’t!” Yaz said hastily, for the Doctor seemed to be steering herself down the wrong path, the exact path upon which Yaz suddenly didn’t want her to go. “You definitely didn’t! I was just surprised. Really surprised, actually. But you definitely didn’t misread.”

“Oh.” The Doctor let out a breath of relief. “Well, that’s good. I suppose—well, this regeneration is rather socially awkward, you know. Seem to misread things a lot. Recipes, instructions, shopping lists—er, you get the picture.”

She stopped, and looked up at Yaz in a way that might have been shy on anybody else. “I suppose then, since I didn’t misread, you wouldn’t mind me giving it another go? Haven’t had much practice lately, I’m afraid, but I figure we could probably—oh!”

She was rudely interrupted by Yaz stepping foward and pulling into a kiss by the suspenders. The Doctor opened her mouth to complain, but didn’t have time before Yaz’s mouth found hers, and then she realized she didn’t really want to complain anyway, because Yaz’s lips tasted remarkably like icing, which, she supposed, was the benefit of kissing a girl who baked. Not that she hadn’t been wondering for a while what Yaz’s lips tasted like, but the reality was turning out to be nicer than she imagined, and that wasn’t even to mention her hands, syrup-coated nonwithstanding, which had found their way to her hips, and were currently sneaking all the way—

“Uh, Doc?”

They froze, the both of them together, and then as one flew backwards, Yaz blushing, the Doctor grinning like a fox. She pivoted to the door, and gave a little wave. “Oh hey Graham? ‘Fraid Yaz’s masterpiece isn’t done yet.”

“I…think I can see that.” He was looking between them, eyes wide as a fish, and then quickly took a step backwards. “Right. I’ll come back later then. Much later.”

“Perf,” the Doctor said, pointedly oblivious to the hole Yaz’s gaze was drilling into the floor. “Oh, and pass it on to Ryan, will ya? That Yaz’s masterpiece won’t be ready for…oh, I dunno, a couple hours?”

A small moan came from Yaz’s direction. Graham’s eyes bulged. His next words were choked. “I—course, Doc. I’ll—pass it on.”

And then he practically flew out the doorway, faster than the Doctor had ever seen him run, even when facing down certain death. She frowned as she considered this, then turned back to Yaz.

“Ya know, next time Graham complains about being slow, we could probably just start kissing and—”

“Oh my god,” Yaz groaned. She buried her face in her hands. “ _Doctor_ —”

“Sorry, Yaz.” She didn’t seem entirely sorry. But she stepped closer, and when Yaz finally looked up from her hands, it was to find the Doctor right in front of her, her eyes shining with that same look before. Soft, and ridiculously happy. “But Yaz, can I tell you—”

“Hmm?” Yaz still wasn’t entirely recovered from the Graham incident. Her eyes flicked to the Doctor’s face, and then down again to the floor.

“I meant that, about you being brilliant. I’ve had a lot of time to figure it out too. Been sitting here for a while, watching you bake. Suppose I couldn’t help falling a little bit in love.” She grinned, a lopsided smile that made Yaz’s heart do flips. “Yasmin Khan, putting the universe back together. One cake at a time.”

“Oh, stop,” Yaz said, but she looked too pleased to really mean it. “Now you’re just trying to make me blush.”

“Well, it is a benefit.” The Doctor tilted her head, her grin growing wider. “By the way, anyone ever tell you that you taste like icing?”

“Funny, you do too.”

“Huh. Suppose you couldn’t help me get it off.”

Yaz shook her head in disbelief, but couldn’t wipe the smile off her face. “You’re ridiculous, you know that Doctor? Ridiculous, and corny.”

But then she leaned up on her tiptoes and pulled the Doctor down into a kiss, a smiling, stupidly happy kiss which the Doctor fell into, still wearing that crooked grin, and they stayed like that for a while, just kissing, the mess of eclairs forgotten behind them. This time, nobody interrupted them.

That day, Yaz never finished her bake. But she figured that was okay, the one time. After all, she’d put something else together that day, something entirely new and wonderful, and that didn’t happen often, in the grand scheme of the universe.

And anyway, the important thing was that she’d tried.

**Author's Note:**

> The whole point of this fic is that if you do something--anything--that brings even a tiny bit of creativity or happiness into the world, you're brilliant and you're doing something right. Also, the Doctor and Yaz are totally in love.


End file.
